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Rh are not included in the extant seven. Thus it will be seen that the manuscripts on which our editions are founded contained the first three Books, and a portion of the fourth, of Aristophanes's collection.

The several Odes of these four Books were arranged by Aristophanes according to their occasions, not chronologically—for Pindar's earliest extant Ode is the Tenth Pythian, his next the Sixth Pythian, and his latest the Fifth Olympian,—but so that (as a rule) poems commemorating chariot-victories should begin a Book, these being followed by Odes for feats of strength, as boxing and wrestling; and lastly, by those recording the victories of speed in the "stadium" and "diaulus" or "long-race" (literally "double-course"). As a rule, also, the successes of grown men, in any species of competition, precede those of boys in the corresponding juvenile matches. The classification also involved sundry other minute considerations as to the relative dignity of different competitions into which we need not enter, the more so as Aristophanes does not seem to have always carried out his own principles with absolute precision. The First Olympian Ode, "For Hiero of Syracuse, victor in the Horse-race," owes its precedence to the legends contained in it, the adventures of Pelops, from whom the Morea (as we call it) was supposed to have derived its classical name—"The Isle of Pelops," the "Peloponnesus;" and whose race on the plains of Elis to win his bride Hippodameia was regarded as a prototype of the Olympian contests of a later day.

But the received classification has many disad-